Lights of Learning Will Burn at Hebrew University

The $250 million gift to Hebrew University from the hedge fund manager John Paulson is the largest in the 101 year-old history of the school and a landmark in the annals of Israel. Mr. Paulson declares in a statement that the gift is “meant to show support and international solidarity with Israel,” a country of which “we should all be proud.” He adds that if there were “ever a time to step up and support the country and its institutions, this would be it.”Mr. Paulson’s gift looms even larger given his largesse to the school that might be reckoned the Hebrew University of Cambridge — Harvard. In 2015 he gave $400 million to endow the Ivy’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. To this day that is still the largest gift ever bequeathed to Harvard University. Now, though, Mr. Paulson “can think of no more deserving university for philanthropic support than Hebrew University.”Businessweek reckons that Mr. Paulson transformed “from an obscure money manager into a financial legend” in 2007, when he used credit default swaps to bet against the subprime mortgage lending market. That stroke of foresight earned him some $4 billion that year alone. He made another $5 billion in 2010, largely by betting big on gold. Now he is investing in Israel, which he calls a “vibrant, democratic, pluralistic, and advanced economy.”American donors are catching on to the achievements of Israeli universities, which have managed to thrive despite their students and faculties serving long stretches of reserve duty. In June it was announced that Dr. Howard and Lottie Marcus willed $400 million to Ben-Gurion University. In 2024, an anonymous donor gave Bar-Ilan University $260 million. Last year, the president of Blackstone, Jon Gray, pledged $125 million to Tel Aviv University. Mr. Paulson’s donation, which will rename the school’s Mt. Scopus campus, comes a little more than a century after the university was dedicated on April 1, 1925. The guest of honor was Lord Balfour, who dedicated the library. On hand were the high commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, the poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, the philosopher Ahad Ha’am, and Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber sat on the university’s board.Two years prior, in 1923, the school’s first science lecture had been delivered by one Albert Einstein. On that trip the discoverer of relativity declared “I consider this the greatest day of my life. Today I have been made happy by the sight of the Jewish people learning to recognize themselves and to make themselves recognized as a force in the world.” Einstein would eventually decamp to Princeton from Berlin — and turn down the presidency of the Jewish state.Mr. Paulson’s gift comes against the backdrop of the spread of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment on American colleges in the wake of October 7, 2023 — not least at Harvard. A suit brought by the Department of Justice in March alleges that the school “tolerated antisemitic mobs of students, faculty, and visitors allegedly expressing their opposition to Israel by assaulting, harassing, and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students.”That lawsuit was dismissed in August, but the DOJ is appealing. No court is needed, though, to ascertain that prejudice was rampant at Harvard. In the days after October 7 our A.R. Hoffman interviewed Hebrew University’s previous president, Asher Cohen. He numbered Harvard among the “lighthouses that have failed us” by failing to “unequivocally” condemn Hamas. Mr. Paulson has now ensured that the lights will burn bright at Jerusalem.

Lights of Learning Will Burn at Hebrew University

Lights of Learning Will Burn at Hebrew University

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